Greeley one of few cities in nation to ask voters to keep city manager

Roy Otto, city manager for Greeley, smiles as he serves lunch to the elderly at the Senior Center, 1010 6th St. in Greeley. A provision added to the city charter more than 40 years ago requires the city manager to get approval from Greeley voters to keep his job. The question is on this year’s ballot.

Greeley City Manager, Roy Otto, gets a mohawk by his administrative assistant, Greta Steinmetz, of Evans, held in place with the whip cream pie that just got thrown onto his face at Greeley City Hall. The pie throw was part of a fundraising auction for United Way in 2009.

A measure to repeal the retention vote has been on Greeley’s ballot six times since it was added to the charter, shot down each time by Greeley voters:

» 1973: Failed by a 63 percent majority

» 1979: Failed by a 54 percent majority

» 1983: Failed by a 55 percent majority

» 1985: Failed by a 60 percent majority

» 1993: Failed by a 52 percent majority

» 2001: Failed by a 60 percent majority

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Roy Otto will find himself in a bit of a pickle every six years for as long he is employed by the city of Greeley.

Thanks to a provision added to the city charter more than 40 years ago, the city manager — now it’s Otto — must get approval from Greeley voters to keep his job. The question is on this year’s ballot.

The problem is Otto isn’t an elected official. As the chief executive officer for the city, he’s hired by the city council as a neutral agent who carries out the council’s policies. And the city’s charter prohibits Otto from getting involved in electoral politics, meaning he can’t campaign for himself or tell voters what political positions he supports.

It’s a “very odd, very unusual” situation for any city manager, said Michele Frisby, director of communications for the International City/County Management Association based in Washington, D.C.

Frisby said she knows of only four communities in the nation that practice any kind of election regarding their city manager. She likened the city manager to the executive director of a business. When the CEO isn’t doing well, he or she is usually fired by the board of directors — not by all of the shareholders.

But some, including Steve Mazurana, a political science professor emeritus with the University of Northern Colorado who was involved with the retention vote initiative, say any way for voters to review the jobs of their public servants is a good thing.

The retention vote came about in 1969, when a group of Greeley residents were upset with how the city manager was doing his job. It went into effect in the 1971 election, and City Manager Ben Cruce was voted out of office. Since then, five city managers have gotten approval from Greeley voters to keep their jobs — including Otto in 2007.

A repeal of the retention vote has appeared on the ballot six times since 1971, defeated every time by Greeley voters. It came closest in 1993, when voters decided 52 percent to 48 percent to keep the retention vote.

Greeley City Council members have proposed a new measure to repeal the vote, which would be on the city’s 2015 ballot.

“I think any time the voters can be involved in the system, they ought to get a chance to vote for things,” said Greeley Mayor Tom Norton. “But in the case of the city manager, the voters vote for the city council. So if the council does its job, the manager will do his job.”

The city council still has the power to hire and fire the city manager. In one or two instances, voters retained the city manager, who was later fired by the city council, Mazurana said. Even so, he said there was little backlash, if any, from voters saying council members did not do their bidding.

Otto said he feels the vote can force city managers to become political. This week, he said, he received a call from a Greeley voter who wanted to know whether he is a Republican or a Democrat. As a nonpartisan agent of the city, Otto said he couldn’t respond.

“From my perspective, a city manager doing his or her job well would be able to implement the policies of the most liberal or the most conservative council,” he said.

Otto said he could imagine an instance in which city council members ask the city manager to carry out a policy that may not be politically popular. If that were the case before a retention vote, he said the city manager is placed in an awkward position.

“I think it’s entirely unfair,” Wiest said of the retention vote. “The city manager can be fired any Tuesday night by the city council.”

He said the retention vote also has some inconsistences. Because it comes every six years, voters could be asked whether to retain a city manager who began just a few months ago, but they may not know that. In fact, voters may not know what the city manager does at all — especially because he isn’t out campaigning in the public sphere.

Greeley City Council member Robb Casseday said voters are often more in touch with the actions of the city council anyway.

“Roy (Otto) may be in charge, or the final decision-maker for certain things that pertain to managing the city on a day-to-day basis, but most people think it’s the city council,” Casseday said.

Still, the power of the city council to fire the city manager is a good check against what voters say, Mazurana said. And the vote ultimately gives Greeley residents a way to voice their feelings about how the city is doing.

“It’s probably still not a bad idea to reflect either praise or blame with one’s vote,” Mazurana said.

Wiest was originally hired by Cruce, the first and only city manager to lose the retention vote. He said he remembers Cruce as a dominating character who got in the crossfires with some residents over the way he collected money and purchased land to build what is now the City Hall Annex Building, north of Lincoln Park.

Mazurana said the city council had not directed Cruce to set aside money for that building, so he and others began a movement to get a retention vote on the ballot.

Wiest said part of the city building issue was taken to court, and Cruce got involved in another conflict about the bidding process for some police radios.

Some local governments have a “strong mayor” form of government, in which the mayor is the key authority and day-to-day manager of the city.

Greeley has a council-manager form of government, in which the city manager oversees the city’s operations and makes daily decisions, but the mayor and city council set policy, approve the budget and pass ordinances.

Otto said he knew from an early age he wanted to be a city manager because he could participate in government without getting political.

“That’s the hallmark of the council-manager form of government, and that is why this is a troubling provision to have in a council charter,” he said.